Proud Pat Lam talks up Robbie Henshaw progress

Robbie Henshaw enjoyed the niggle that came with facing his Connacht team-mates across the divide in yesterday’s Ireland training session in Galway.

He also enjoyed the acclaim from the hundreds of young supporters waiting for his autograph afterwards, and yet after two accomplished Six Nations starts, the young centre is managing to stay focused on the one job that matters: tackling England in Dublin on March 1.

The 21-year-old has the rugby world of at his feet after just seven Test appearances for Ireland but has the air of a young man who looks completely secure in his surroundings on the international sporting stage.

“Doesn’t he look comfortable?” asked a glowing Connacht head coach Pat Lam yesterday after his charges had put Ander Herrera and his Ireland team-mates through their paces in a public training session at the Sportsground. “I think he is just getting stronger and stronger and better and better. It is world class.

“Just talking to Joe (Schmidt), defensively he doesn’t care, doesn’t care who he is tackling, doesn’t care who is up there, he is a beast and is there to hurt people. He is just going to get better and better.”

Keeping Henshaw at Connacht beyond the end of his current deal in June 2016 will represent the Connacht boss’s biggest challenge of the next 16 months but Lam believes the vision his province offers is one to convince him to stick around.

“The main thing is the here and the now,” Lam said. “A lot was made, has been made on whether he was going. Nothing has changed from what we have been saying all along. I think he is no different from every other rugby player in the sense of contracts, you have options. The more you play, the higher the level you go to.

“Players make decisions based on what is put in front of them. But ultimately all of those opportunities come on what you do day in, and day out. The guys know that.

“You think of our vision and today was massive. The Irish national team, four provinces. Connacht’s vision of grassroots to green shirts from the growing and promoting of the game. You bring those together and Robbie is probably the example of going from grassroots to green shoots at Connacht, green shirt of Ireland.”

It is the green jersey of his country not the colour of his jersey in 2016-17, that is occupying Henshaw’s mind right now and after two sterling efforts at inside centre against Italy and France, the Galwegian is in a positive mood.

“I think we’re in a really good position after two big games,” Henshaw said. “Italy wasn’t easy away, our first test, France coming back to Dublin then was a tough occasion but we ground it out. We’ve put ourselves in a good position now and this is possibly going to be the championship decider against England. It’s massive.

“It was my first time playing against France in my international career and I found it was a big step-up physically. They had a massive pack running at us and I found the physical threat of (Mathieu) Bastareaud quite tough to deal with. But I thought myself and Johnny (Sexton) worked well together to hold him up a couple of times. We trained really well during the week and we put into place what we did and it worked out.”

A picture of a sleeping Bastareaud in a Dublin nightclub in the early hours of Sunday morning told the story of how well it worked out for Henshaw on Saturday evening but the centre pointed to out-half Sexton’s early big hit on the Toulon battering ram that earned a penalty from the Frenchman’s first carry as a pivotal moment.

“It was his first game back and he got a good shot on him,” Henshaw said of Sexton. “He created the turnover himself, we got a scrum and we exited well. That really set the tone.”

A first clash with England will be another challenge again for the fledgling international centre, who said: “I’m really looking forward to it. It’s not going to be easy. It’s going to be a massive test. They’re going really well and they’ve unbelievable potential, especially in the backline. They’re a young, electric backline and electric wingers so they’re going to really test us.

“It’s a new ball game but I think we have a lot more to offer in terms of our attack and we’re really going to have a go at them this time and really going to put it to them. It’s on our soil and I think we’re not going to hold back.”